The Northern Illinois Chapter of the Air Conditioning Contractors of America (NIACCA) has gained a major legislative victory in its ongoing efforts to stop unfair competition via joint marketing by gas utilities and their affiliates.

One of the best ways to ensure that your equipment is operating at its peak performance is to perform regularly scheduled maintenance inspections. However, most dehumidifiers seem to be neglected as far as regular maintenance goes. These maintenance instructions are specific to any piece of refrigerant-based dehumidification equipment.

Mold neurotoxicity is an increasingly common allegation in personal injury litigation, although conspicuously absent from the clinic. The current mold neurotoxicity controversy is driven more by lawyers than by scientific disagreements.

A year ago, Don Bowen, owner of Bowen Refrigeration, Heating, and Cooling, was the winner of The News’ “Do You Want to Grow Your Business?” contest. He won a free marketing analysis from HVACR business consultant Ruth King. Among the items King recommended for increasing residential and commercial service accounts was to start up a service agreement program. Bowen took the advice — and it has paid off.

The News recently published information on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ruling that it is legal for businesses to sell prepackaged split-system appliances to unlicensed customers, often referred to as do-it-yourselfers. The EPA received many comments about its decision to impose a stay on its regulation, which originally limited the sale of the appliances.

Space conditioning indoor air typically involves more than just cooling. Occupant comfort requires moisture removal and air exchange with the outdoor air for improved indoor air quality (IAQ). Each of these aspects requires additional air conditioning capacity, resulting in drained condensate water and exhausted indoor air. What if there was a way to reclaim this capacity to improve the efficiency of the mechanical cooling system?

If there are trends in transport refrigeration, they concern quietness and precision. Noise reduction comes in because trucks often bring products to supermarkets conveniently located in residential areas — but with deliveries needed first thing in the morning. Enhanced temperature control is designed to preserve products at optimum shipping temperatures while controlling costs. Thermo King focused on such factors in the development of its SB-100 trailer refrigeration unit.

One of the key features of the latest Food Code is a recommendation that each food establishment have an effective Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) plan tailored to its own operations. The HACCP plan identifies hazards that might contribute to food-borne illnesses, and establishes critical points in the food-handling process where controls can help ensure the safety of food. Refrigerated storage is one such critical point.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced the release of six books that complete its Energy Design Guidelines for High Performance Schools, a series of publications developed to help school districts save millions of dollars on annual utility bills by designing energy-efficient schools specifically for their regional climates.